Monday, July 30, 2018

Commonplace Book

'...He was also the reverse of good-looking: that is, he would have been very handsome indeed, as Anna-Rose remarked several days later to Anna-Felicitas, when the friendship had become a settled thing, - which indeed it did as soon as Mr. Twist had finished wiping their eyes and noses that first afternoon, it being impossible, they discovered, to have one's eyes and noses wiped by somebody without being friends afterwards (for such an activity, said Anna-Felicitas, belonged to the same order of events as rescue from fire, lions, or drowning, after which in books you married him; but this having only been wiping, said Anna-Rose, the case was adequately met by friendship) - he would have been very handsome indeed if he hadn't had a face.'

from Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim (Chapter VII)

Monday, July 16, 2018

Scarlet and Hyssop by EF Benson (1902)

This is Benson in mainly serious mode, and sultry with it. Set largely in London, it details a tearing confrontation between two society women, conducted in the most blithe tones. Married Mildred Brereton has been having an affair with Jack Alston, which everybody knows about and doesn't comment on. Jack's wife, Marie, is the other party. She is the only one who has no idea of the affair. She is known in some quarters as the snowflake, because she is seen as a little chilly and unmeltable. She has very little interest in Jack, having some time ago come to the conclusion that she ought to have married her early sweetheart Jim Spencer. When Jim comes back from his post-disappointment exploits in South Africa and other places, Marie realises ever more that he ought to have been hers. They see a lot of each other, and we as readers are let into the knowledge that Marie is anything but a chilly snowflake, admitting to herself her care for Jim, and having to control herself in relation to him so as not to let herself down and cause a scandal. Marie is also known as a cool head in terms of the giving of advice. Mildred's daughter Maud, who despairs of her mother's dilettante, loud and bitchy carry-on, but has no idea of the affair either, turns to Marie for advice about a wealthy young man her mother is throwing at her head as a potential husband. Once she hears Maud's feelings Marie advises her to refuse him, knowing the measure of wedded disappointment so well as she does. Mildred is furious at Marie's interference when Maud reveals it, and devises a scheme to set Marie up as an adulteress (the melting of the snowflake), using Jim as convenient but unaware accessory. She's always deemed Marie her friend but in reality has always suffered dreadfully in comparison to her and has resented her distanced coolness and seeming superiority. When the plan starts to work, and the rumours begin to spread, Mildred doesn't realise how obvious it is that she's the origin. A superbly bitchy associate, Lady Ardingly, takes her to task in a very careful way, making it clear that Mildred could in fact be putting Jack's career at risk with their own affair. With several very deft moves she outflanks Mildred and helps to save Marie from an unfair slur. Jack begins to see Mildred in a new light, and doesn't like the view. He begins to avoid her, and to attempt a reconciliation with Marie, which to her mind is too little too late. At a party in the country Maud and Marie are conferring about her young man, the nature of whose approaches has changed. Quietly occupying a lost corner of the garden, they hear footsteps approaching. It is Jack and Mildred. They overhear Jack attempting, in misery and lostness, to get back together with Mildred after Marie's rejection. Mildred is delighted, and smiles victoriously. It is the first either Marie or Maud know of the affair - the bombshell has dropped. Both are horrified - and the real measure of things becomes clear. Marie escapes unseen back to London. When Jack sees her there the next day, orchestrated by Lady Ardingly, who is his political sponsor in the upcoming election, she agrees to stay his wife as long as they have nothing further to do with each other. Jack, horrified at his own culpability and realising his admiration of her, has yet another meeting with Mildred, who assumes pleasurably that her victory is complete, only to find him deserting her once again. The last scene is of Mildred, as a damaged but fighting survivor of all this, driving in Hyde Park. Her two frisky cobs are getting dangerously flighty, and after a fright head off toward the main road. A series of passers by try to restrain the out of control phaeton which goes slamming into an omnibus. The last passing person who tries to help Mildred recognises at the final moment. It is Jack, who is run down and appallingly mutilated by both the phaeton and the omnibus - she has killed him. An epilogue contains a conversation between Marie and Lady Ardingly at a hotel in Cairo, which reveals that Mildred is becoming yet more loud and shrill in London society, and that Jim and Marie will at last marry. Benson seasons this with plenty of low-key wit in heavily biased exchanges. It is also firmly ensconced within a slightly cynical milieu. In this it reminded me a little of the more broad-based works of another writer, Lucas Malet, having the same sense of thoroughgoing worldliness and sultry bite. But of course where Malet had two main modes, Benson had many. And it has been some of his undoing in terms of reputation that he can't be pinned down; from bright comedy to ghost stories to historical saga to sultriness like this....and on through several other manifestations. His multiplicity was both mark of talent and great confuser for the public. Here's hoping that whatever he continued to attempt, his main attention was given to quality.